The Southeast Asian Front
MARSHALL, PAUL
The Southeast Asian Front Creeping towards Islamization in Indonesia BY PAUL MARSHALL The struggle against extremist Islam is not only military and diplomatic, it is also a war of ideas. In this...
...Maarif, though criticizing the proposals, still says he "wants them debated...
...So far, the constitutional route is blocked...
...Then there is intimidation: One high-ranking member of parliament says he is "terrified" of the Islamists...
...Yusril Mahendra, whose Crescent Moon and Star party received only 3 percent of the votes in the 1999 elections, has become the spectacularly misnamed "minister of justice and human rights...
...The groups also share bin Laden's view that Australia's effort to "separate East Timor from Indonesia" is part of an "international conspiracy by followers of the Cross...
...Radicals have already proved adept at exploiting divisions within the parliament...
...However, the country remains under threat from Islamist radicals, and its impending elections provide ample opportunity for extremist mischief...
...The government's response to terrorism has been weak...
...The first two are unlikely to come to anything...
...He is pushing reactionary legislation stipulating that only Muslims may teach Islam to Muslims, even when their parents send them to Christian schools, as is common...
...In 2002 the Jakarta government issued "Letter of Decision No...
...There is also frequent violence...
...In President Bush's words, Indonesia's success "as a pluralistic and democratic state is essential to the peace and prosperity of this region...
...It should be noted that many Indonesian radical leaders have Arab backgrounds, some stemming from a century-old influx from bin Laden's home turf, the Hadramawt Valley on the Yemeni/Saudi border...
...Back in the 1950s, parties supporting the Charter garnered about 40 percent of the national vote, but in 2003 its proponents chose not to bring it to a parliamentary vote because the result would have humiliated them...
...Since this was a public effort, in full view of the Muslim and non-Muslim population, it failed conspicuously—most Indonesians simply do not want it...
...Indonesia's 1945 independence constitution enshrined monotheism and morality as core principles, but deliberately did not incorporate Islamic law...
...Indonesian vice president Hamzah Haz visited Bashir in prison and defended him, accusing America of being the real terrorist...
...Yusuf Galan, one of the suspects of the March 2004 Madrid bombing, is believed to have done terrorist training in Indonesia...
...The simplified version runs like this...
...In Western lists of the world's Islamic leaders, we seldom find Hasyim Muzadi or Ahmad Syafii Maarif...
...The mind-numbing complexity of Indonesia's electoral process makes America's primaries look like a model of rationality...
...Despite Indonesia's moderate heritage, militant Islam is gaining ground, and may make further advances this year...
...Abu Bakar Bashir, widely regarded as the mastermind of Jemaah Islamiyah, was convicted of treason and breaking immigration laws, but received only a four-year sentence, far less than prosecutors had sought...
...Churches in Bekasi, outside Jakarta, have been torn apart by mobs...
...Religions such as Confucianism and animism would be banned entirely...
...In all this, moderate Muslims are being threatened...
...A proposed health bill would bar doctors from treating people of a different religion...
...In recent weeks, a bomb was discovered in a church in Medan, while two churches closed near Surabaya after death threats...
...Speech or writing "repugnant...
...The Islamists are trying four ways to impose their views...
...Other militant groups, such as Laskar Jihad and the Islamic Defenders Front, are committed to the same end...
...Non-Muslims are coming under increased threat...
...One is changing the constitution to incorporate Islamic sharia law...
...Three of them have told me that they find Islamists, whether homegrown or Arab, woefully ignorant of Islamic texts and historic Islam, with little grasp of Islam beyond a collection of laws...
...Among his recent books is Islam at the Crossroads...
...They force women to wear hijabs, threaten alcohol vendors, attack nightclubs, and at prayer times force shops to close and cars to pull over or be stoned...
...Following the collapse of the 32-year authoritarian Suharto regime in 1998, Islamists renewed their campaign to enshrine the Charter...
...It is also home to the largest concentration of Muslims developing an understanding of Islam at home in a democratic and diverse world, and committed to resisting the reactionary versions being exported from Saudi Arabia...
...They have studied in the West and also in the major centers of Islamic learning in the Middle East, and tend to resent being lectured on Islam by Arabs...
...Recent polls show that only about 14 percent of the population could be called Islamist on even the most expansive definition...
...A moderate Sufi style took hold in a largely Hindu culture adept at taking the edge off incoming religions...
...The moderates become a "silent majority," with no clear leadership...
...The United States has taken notice of Indonesia's terrorism, but less so of the country's creeping Islamization...
...Former Indonesian president and Nahdlatul Ula-ma head Wahid described Mahendra to me as the equivalent of a Ku Klux Klan leader, and said he should be fired immediately...
...And for at least a decade, the Saudis have been pumping in money with the goal of replacing Indonesia's Islam with their own strict Wahhabi version...
...These groups were active, usually against the country's large Christian population, long before the October 2002 Bali nightclub bombing brought them to world attention...
...One of these, the Mujahedeen Kompak, is active in Sulawesi...
...Another is terrorism...
...Islam came to Indonesia via merchants and preachers, not conquerors...
...It is by far the largest country in Southeast Asia, a struggling democracy, and an oil and gas exporter that sits astride the world's busiest shipping lanes...
...In March 2004, in Surabaya, Indonesia's second largest city, with nearly 3 million people, thousands demonstrated for the introduction of sharia...
...The length of this process, combined with the fragmentation and corruption of the political establishment, provides plentiful opportunities for Islamists to exploit the parliamentary and party system...
...The failure of this legal route has led to the growth of terrorist groups such as Jemaah Islamiyah, which may have roots in Darul Islam...
...Despite the government's flaccid response, these movements cannot take over the country...
...All schools with any Muslim students would also be required to have mosques or their equivalent, meaning that mosques would have to be built on the church grounds on which many Christian schools sit...
...The Indonesian government has tried and sentenced Jemaah Islamiyah members for widespread bombings in 2000 as well as the nightclub bombing in Bali, but it still downplays the extent of the terrorist networks...
...He will be released shortly and vows to continue jihad against Islam's enemies...
...The Electoral Commission has 30 days to certify the results...
...The International Crisis Group's Sidney Jones believes that Jemaah Islamiyah has now splintered into several hardline factions...
...137," which provides for closing churches if local residents object to their existence...
...As the price for their support, the small radical parties demand "Islamic" legislation or strategic positions in the government...
...Paul Marshall is senior fellow at Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom...
...Bashir's Islamic academy, Al-Mukmin Ngruki, which produced 5 of the 11 key Bali bombers, is still functioning...
...Yet they head two huge Muslim social, religious, and educational organizations—Nahdlatul Ulama and Muham-madiyah—that reach up to 50 million and 40 million people respectively, more than the population of any Arab country except Egypt...
...One of the convicted Bali bombers, Amrozi bin Nurhasiym, says his goal is to establish an Islamic state throughout Southeast Asia...
...Money is sorely needed, especially to counter Saudi influence...
...There are many reasons to care about Indonesia...
...Any party that can get 5 percent of the vote or 3 percent of the seats in the lower house can then nominate candidates for the presidential and vice presidential elections due on July 5. The Commission has to certify the result of this vote by August 5. If, as seems likely, no ticket gets more than 50 percent of the nationwide vote and at least 20 percent of the vote in half the provinces, there must be a runoff between the two top tickets on September 20, with the vote to be validated by October 5 and the victors sworn in on October 20...
...On April 5, elections will be held for parliament, for the 32 provincial legislatures, and for about 400 district-level bodies...
...So an Islamist drift continues...
...Radicals are also taking the law into their own hands to enforce sharia on a local level in Sulawesi, Sumatra, Eastern Java, Banten, Flores, Sumba, and the Bandung area...
...Subsequently, his treason conviction was tossed out, and on March 9, 2004, the Supreme Court, without explanation, reduced his immigration sentence to 18 months...
...Neither has the votes to govern on its own, so each must seek the support of the smaller parties that hold the balance of power...
...There were 13 bombings in Sulawesi in February, and a bomb factory blew up in Jakarta last week...
...Din Syamsuddin, secretary general of the Council of Ulemas and probably the next head of Muham-madiyah, told me "it is unwise to confront the radicals—better to keep them inside...
...The real danger lies elsewhere, in the creeping Islamization produced by legislative change and local pressure...
...In this battle there are few more important countries than Indonesia, whose 230 million people make it by far the largest Muslim country and democracy...
...As an alternative, Wahid suggests equipping moderates to prevail in the battle of ideas...
...They, and others such as Abdurrahman Wahid and Nurcholish Madjid, are developing and propagating an understanding of Islam that is creative and culturally attuned...
...With Indonesia's patterns of corruption and intimidation, the money could leach away to radicals...
...to a religion" could bring a five-year sentence, as could words leading people not to follow "any religion that is based on the belief in one God...
...Megawati has criticized these proposals, as have Mad-jid and Nahdlatul Ulama and, to a degree, Muhammadiyah leaders...
...In eastern Indonesia, on the islands of Maluku and Sulawesi, ongoing fighting between Christians and Muslims has left more than 10,000 dead and up to half a million refugees...
...Nevertheless, these bills make headway because parties such as Golkar flirt with them in a search for Islamist votes, while other legislators go along in order to avoid the charge of being "against Islam...
...At the time of independence, Islamists proposed an amendment, the "Jakarta Charter," requiring all Muslims to follow sharia...
...The draft "Law on Inter-Religious Toleration" would require people "to uphold the teachings and values of his respective religion" and forbid views "not aligned with the principal teaching of such religion...
...The third is piecemeal legislative change, and the fourth is domination of towns and provinces where the militants can impose their views through local support or by intimidation...
...On Lompok island, after radicals destroyed 18 churches, the local government gave permission to rebuild only one...
...Meanwhile, the conservative Council of Ulemas has supported the bills, and other Muslim leaders are wobbly...
...Beyond that, Islam will need the influence of moderates such as Madjid, Wahid, and Abshar-Abdullah if the Muslim world is to avoid sliding into a dark age that imperils us all...
...This is likely to be exacerbated as Indonesia goes through a season of elections...
...Instead of receiving translations of Saudi works, he says, Indonesians should translate their own works into Arabic...
...The amendment was defeated, prompting some of its proponents to launch an insurrection, the Darul Islam movement, that was not put down until the 1950s...
...Like its elections, Indonesia's party system is complex and fluid, but, broadly, there are two large nationalist parties, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, led by President Megawati Sukarnoputri, and Golkar, the party Suharto created during his long rule...
...The state could force people by law to follow the decrees of a religious teacher and forbid all religious dissent...
...South Sulawesi has Islamic criminal laws on the books, though it has no power to implement them...
...The last two— both forms of creeping Islamization—are having more success...
...Laskar Jihad, responsible for massacres of Christians in the eastern areas, announced that it was disbanding but now seems to be regrouping in Papua and Ceram...
...Let them tell Indonesians why the extremists are bad Muslims...
...President Bush has promised $157 million to help improve education in the country's schools, including the Islamic boarding schools called pesantrens...
...Other bills would forbid interreligious marriage...
...In Jakarta a dozen churches have been closed in the last three months, often after pressure on local Muslims by outsiders...
...But most pesantrens are run by Nahdlatul Ulama and already teach moderate Islam...
...Its problem is that the radicals are committed, organized, have a clear vision, and are often well funded, and so can intimidate and outmaneuver their larger but more hesitant Muslim and nationalist opponents...
...Ulil Abshar-Abdallah, a founder of the group Liberal Islam, was hit by a fatwa death sentence by west Javanese clerics because of his writings...
...Another, the Republik Persatuan Islam Indonesia, has been training in the Philippines...
Vol. 9 • April 2004 • No. 29
